Responses to immigration in the Gilded Age
Immigration as a vital source of labor
Throughout American history, immigration has been presented as both a vital source of labor and a potential threat to the employment prospects of native-born American workers. In the late 19th century, industrialists seeking masses of readily available and often relatively inexpensive labor saw recently arrived immigrants as critical to economic expansion. Additionally, many of the homesteaders on the plains and in the west were new immigrants to the country, eager to establish their own farms and to pursue the greater range of opportunities available to them than were available in their native countries. These recently arrived immigrants soon found themselves competing directly with native-born laborers and farmers, sometimes resulting in cultural clashes and even armed conflict.
Immigration as a challenge to American culture
While immigrants are at times hailed for their enduring contributions to American culture, including how Americans often define themselves in terms of their ancestors’ nationalities and ethnicities, immigrants are also at times depicted as posing real threats to American culture, particularly during eras of rapid arrivals of immigrants from newer or nontraditional origins. Frequently cited reasons for potential threats to American culture include different languages, religions, and cultural traditions; during the late 19th century, large numbers of Catholics immigrated from Germany, Ireland, Italy and Poland, leading to increasing calls by Protestants to prevent school funding for Catholic schools as well as Temperance advocates decrying “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” Significant Jewish immigration to the United States in the later years of the 19th century was also criticized, introducing more explicit **antisemitism **into American society. Additional objections to newly arrived immigrants included concerns about immigrants costing taxpayers money as “public charges” as well as the transmission of contagious diseases.
Restricting immigration
While the newly arrived European immigrants discussed above encountered significant prejudice, **Chinese **immigrants suffered greater discrimination and violence, particularly in the western United States. Many Chinese immigrants settled into their own ethnic neighborhoods, Chinatowns, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. Tragically, Chinese miners and urban residents were attacked and many killed in Los Angeles in 1871, **Denver in 1880, Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1885 and Seattle in 1886. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act denying new Chinese immigrants permission to settle in the United States; many of the supporters of the law hoped that Chinese workers then in the United States would swiftly return to China.
King County (Seattle) Sheriff John H. McGraw, 1886
Americanization
Reactions to immigration ranged from welcoming the new immigrants to discrimination to an outright ban on future Chinese immigration; an important aspect to welcoming newly arrived immigrants was a renewed drive for Americanization. Advocates of Americanization increasingly emphasized the need for immigrants to speak English and to outwardly demonstrate their commitment to the United States through the **pledge of allegiance **that debuted in 1892, coinciding with the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas and the World’s Columbian Exposition, or World’s Fair, in Chicago in 1893. Baptist minister Francis Bellamy’s original pledge of allegiance, which did not directly reference the United States nor God, changes that were made in 1923 and 1954, respectively, was soon followed by Katherine Lee Bates’s America the Beautiful, a song acknowledging the natural beauty of the country, including the “purple mountain majesty” of Pike’s Peak in Colorado.